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New Member

I tried out Genius and ended up turning it off. In iTunes 8 I think the side bar takes up too much real estate.

What I didn't like most is the side bar has turned into a marketing tool for iTunes. It goes out and creates a list of recommendations for purchased music along with a convenient button to purchase it.

New Member

You can close the sidebar if that is your major turn off. You don't even have to see it if you don't want to. Try that, and your "issue" becomes a non-issue. The purpose of that sidebar is to act as a recommendation. They most certainly will allow you to hide it.

If you need help figuring it out, let us know. (Hell, I'll give you a hint: It is the little clickable box right below the Genius SideBar. Click it, it goes away. You don't "turn off" Genius...it still exists without the sidebar.)
Good luck.

Meet Genius: a brilliant way to create perfect playlists. Play a song, click the Genius button, and iTunes creates a playlist of other songs from your library that go great together. Genius playlists help you discover songs in your library you never knew you had — and rediscover forgotten favorites.

Genius Sidebar

While you reacquaint yourself with the music you already own, let Genius introduce you to new music you’ll love. As you select songs in your library, the Genius sidebar displays songs from the iTunes Store that go great with it. The Genius sidebar won’t recommend songs already in your library, and you can preview and buy recommended songs directly from the sidebar.

Grid View

See your iTunes library in a new way. Select Albums in Grid View and iTunes 8 displays your entire music library using cover art. Select Artists, Genres, or Composers and iTunes automatically creates groups of albums based on your selection. Simply skim across a group to see the albums inside, and start playing an album with a single click. Movies, TV shows, podcasts, and audiobooks look great in Grid View, too.

.....It really isn't a money maker...it is just a new feature in iTunes 8.0, and is now being utilized as well in the iPhone and iPod touch updates (an all future iPods, too).

Genius allows you to select 1 song. Using Genius in iTunes, or the iPhone, a playlist is then created making 25, 50, 75 or 100 song-playlist that will select only music that plays well with the song you selected (taking genre, beat of the song, etc. into equation). It is great for someone like me who has a very diverse library. I typicallly only play music on shuffle/random.

What Genius does for me is allow me to create a quick playlist on the go if I just have a feeling to listen to a certain song, and would like other songs to fit well with the tempo or genre of that song. Also, which is not as interesting but is somewhat of an added benefit, is the Genius Toolbar on the right (which I keep hidden). If you are wondering if there is any other band out there that you can explore based on being similar to an artist or song you like, it gives you a nice list of other suggestions....kind of like going into iTunes, looking at an artist, and seeing what other people downloded who also like that artist.

I would not equate the overall benefit of the Genius Playlist maker as a money maker. I find the feature helpful for on-the-go creation of playlists, as well as a new feature to try to find new artists I have not heard of/songs I do not own (again, I keep it closed, and will only open if I feel like "exploring").

New Member

Meet Genius: a brilliant way to create perfect playlists. Play a song, click the Genius button, and iTunes creates a playlist of other songs from your library that go great together. Genius playlists help you discover songs in your library you never knew you had — and rediscover forgotten favorites.

Genius Sidebar

While you reacquaint yourself with the music you already own, let Genius introduce you to new music you’ll love. As you select songs in your library, the Genius sidebar displays songs from the iTunes Store that go great with it. The Genius sidebar won’t recommend songs already in your library, and you can preview and buy recommended songs directly from the sidebar.

Grid View

See your iTunes library in a new way. Select Albums in Grid View and iTunes 8 displays your entire music library using cover art. Select Artists, Genres, or Composers and iTunes automatically creates groups of albums based on your selection. Simply skim across a group to see the albums inside, and start playing an album with a single click. Movies, TV shows, podcasts, and audiobooks look great in Grid View, too.

New Member

You can close the sidebar if that is your major turn off. You don't even have to see it if you don't want to. Try that, and your "issue" becomes a non-issue. The purpose of that sidebar is to act as a recommendation. They most certainly will allow you to hide it.

I really didn't like the Grid View either. I didn't investigate if I can turn that off also. I'm one of those that sometimes still drops down to the DOS prompt. Too much eye candy sometimes gets in the way.

New Member

I really didn't like the Grid View either. I didn't investigate if I can turn that off also. I'm one of those that sometimes still drops down to the DOS prompt. Too much eye candy sometimes gets in the way.

New Member

It does sound like it has potential. If you take too long creating a playlist Genius will create a great one for you. Or if your driving and only want to listen to slow jams genius will put together a whole bunch of good slow jams. (I Think Haven't downloaded yet but that's my guess.)

I saw your post on another thread and answered it. Here is what I said.

When you are in your newly created Genius playlist look at the upper right. It will default to 25 songs but you can change it to 25, 50, 75, or 100. For the already created playlist it will update it...

New Member

I saw your post on another thread and answered it. Here is what I said.

When you are in your newly created Genius playlist look at the upper right. It will default to 25 songs but you can change it to 25, 50, 75, or 100. For the already created playlist it will update it...

New Member

I just read in the manual that if you create a playlist on the iPhone you can tap and edit or delete the playlist but once a Genius playlist is synced back to iTunes, you won't be able to delete it directly from the iPhone. You can use iTunes to edit the playlist, stop syncing, or delete the playlist.

New Member

I love Genius. All of my music is tagged way more than it needs to be, so that may help, but the Playlists are great and the sidebar has given me a bunch of great songs I've never heard of. I'm not sure if you read the agreement or not, but it clearly stated that Genius will get better as it is used. Give it time.

New Member

Genius

I thought I'd hate it, but I think it's pretty cool. Usually on my drive to work, I'd just load up my sync playlist (Dave's playlist) and hit shuffle. Now I can hit genius and choose a song to fit my mood that day and I'm hitting the skip button MUCH less often. For that alone, I find it worthy. It definitely reminds me of pandora. Nice algorithm! I don't really understand how it improves with time (or interaction with other users), but that is intriguing...